Portland woman says Amazon Alexa recorded personal conversation, sent it to contact

Updated May 24, 2018 at 3:36 PM;Posted May 24, 2018 at 11:41 AM

LG Electronics USA Vice President of Marketing David VanderWaal (L) and Amazon Vice President of Alexa, Echo and Appstore Mike George display the LG Smart InstaView Door-in-Door refrigerator during a LG press event for CES 2017 at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center on January 4, 2017 in Las Vegas, Nevada. (David Becker/Getty Images)

In a statement to KIRO, Amazon said, "Echo woke up due to a word in background conversation sounding like 'Alexa.' Then, the subsequent conversation was heard as a 'send message' request. At which point, Alexa said out loud 'To whom?' At which point, the background conversation was interpreted as a name in the customer's contact list. Alexa then asked out loud, '[contact name], right?' Alexa then interpreted background conversation as 'right.' As unlikely as this string of events is, we are evaluating options to make this case even less likely."